Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[beverly evans]

Quote: Linda, Thanks, that's just what's in there and I didn't spread it out and it had stopped stinking. But now the rain has come down the past two days like gangbusters and it will start again. I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and hire help.
New subject! I have two roosters no one wants, so I am going to eat them. Now, to fatten up their scrawny a**es what special things can I feed them? Other than all the FF they can eat, that is. Anyone know?? : )

 

[beverly evans]

If your compost is in a barrel that does not have lots of ventilation holes in the sides, you may still have an anaerobic culture going on. Barrels may keep things tidy, but that stuff has to breathe A LOT! Let us know how things go with your barrels.

I'm going to my son's and get my dolly back and hopefully him as well. The together we'll wheel those hundred pound cans to the side yard where the garden is going to be and dump them out. We'll have to spread it and water it in hopes of diminishing the smell. I had thought of putting lots of beer and coke into holes punched into the packed manure in the cans to produce enough gas (as suggested by Linda from some guy on the internet called Reganite) to get the good bacteria going but can't waste good beer that way! I'm a Texan after all! : (

 

[Turk Raphael]

Beverly, My grandpa used to use coarse yellow cornmeal, cooked rice (in equal parts) and buttermilk. I will use the same on my Dark Cornish about 20 days before butchering.

As for your tubs of goodies, maybe you could dump and spread it out, then cover it with LOTS of sweet lime? Lime is pretty cheap and don't taste as good as beer!

 

[hillfloweranch]

I been a baaaaadddddd boy did a rant and got a warning for "flaming"  Gotta be politically correct at all times   Ah well....  Hope y'all have started the weekend off well. I spent all day catching up on yard work while my in progress coops and lumber dried out a bit. Hope to be back on that again tomorrow and Monday.

Thought I smelled BBQ! Lol couldn't resist! Ah well - have no idea what you said but just think ...it probably wAs true and that's why someone got their ticker magnetized! Hehehhe nurse reference there again...couldn't resist.

 

[Poulet des Bois]

So you ferment the chick starter & or grower &/or scratch?

 

[Triple Willow]

I been a baaaaadddddd boy did a rant and got a warning for "flaming"  Gotta be politically correct at all times   Ah well....  Hope y'all have started the weekend off well. I spent all day catching up on yard work while my in progress coops and lumber dried out a bit. Hope to be back on that again tomorrow and Monday.

Been there and done that! They make you feel like the politically correct & tolerance police are going to roll up in your driveway huh? LOL

 

[Triple Willow]

So you ferment the chick starter & or grower &/or scratch?

Yes you can ferment all of those.

Here is a link to a great overview of fermenting feed. http://tikktok.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/fermented-feed-faq/

 

[RoseMarie1]

Rose, it happened again today! Dumb birds! lol

THAT is soooo funny! I can just SEE it happening!

 

[RoseMarie1]

Thought I smelled BBQ! Lol couldn't resist! Ah well - have no idea what you said but just think ...it probably wAs true and that's why someone got their ticker magnetized! Hehehhe nurse reference there again...couldn't resist.

lol you guys are a HOOT don't care what anyone says!

 

[LBKS]

I have a question for you all -- have any of you tried fermenting greens? (I was looking for a way to use non-treated grass clippings that could be used for feed, but were way too short to bail to store like hay...came across silage on Google.) I found this while looking over lunch, a very old historical document from the Kansas extension, and it was fascinating though I admit to skimming. There were several experiments, a summary of their findings for all the experiments at the very last several pages or so. Essentially they did grass silage by fermenting in barrels (after the first method failed to produce good results) and fed that to the chickens. More modern methods look like they double bag them in trash cans, cram it down, and invert after closing up to get a good seal.

So to bring this back more to fermented feed in general -- how do you think adding grass clippings to a fermenting bucket of feed would go over? Useful, useless, just one more thing potentially messing up the fermenting process? Maybe just better to make the grass silage with the clippings and in the winter have both fermented feed and some fermented grass?

Two interesting tidbits unrelated to this topic I figured I'd share since most are probably not going to want to skim the document: apparently if they over eat silage some of the hens produced "grass eggs" with olive colored yolks (but this went away after a bit, just happened on initial introduction to it); and because alfalfa wasn't as preferred a forage item and was better established than the grasses they used, it kept better ground cover near the coop.